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User blog:QuestionTuesdayFTW/An open letter to Neo
Neo, as you probably knew, before this whole drama escalated into the shitstorm it has become, that I was never on the server all that often. I think the last time I logged in before this drama started in July 2018 for actual building or otherwise not diffusing drama was a year prior. Needless to say, when I first came onto the server at the very beginning of the drama, I was willing to hear both sides of the conflict. From the railway claim drama, I could tell that you were very upset by the positioning of Hasbro, and although Alpha did mean all good intentions, I do understand that you did not want anything in proximity of Zion. When I talked with you about Zion and the Flaw in order to get more information on why you didn't want anything in proximity of Zion, I was very intrigued. You may have heard me talk about this before, but UMS was one of only two servers where I used to visit very regularly. The other server I visited often was a survival server with an economy, plots, and everything. It was great. The best part about this server was that, under staff approval (It was essentially a limited access server), we could build our own player towns which would sell some plots. A requirement of getting approval for your town involved a lore writeup about your town and its intentions. That's why I was initially approving of Zion, because of its unique lore/backstory, and how different it was compared to the other towns. In my aforementioned Survival server, you had jungle towns, dragon-themed towns, normal towns, and generally concepts that were not common in the UMS. This is also why I think Zion initially was met with huge backlash. Many people in the UMS were accustomed to the normal being just a normal themed town, with roads, railways, and other normal things. Nobody thought about the concepts you had, and I was quite intrigued with your Zion MB Transport System. It was something I haven't seen before. Unfortunately, my own experience with that Survival server and making my own player town left me burnt out for about a year, which explains why most of the time, Ugultu saw and mocked me for playing Warframe. However, I could see myself getting onto the UMS and developing Solaris much more than the bare plateau it currently is because of Zion. Somehow, Zion's unique style made me want to develop my idea more. I wanted to add some more uniqueness to the server. You made me want to get back into Minecraft and build stuff. In the wake of what's now known as the "Railway Claim Drama," the fact that Ugultu claimed the Fegeline had a no building zone around it to stop Zion development near it created a misunderstanding, which was the centre of the debate. This may be why you hate Ugu, especially as a mod, because it seemed that he was allowed to claim transport systems as a part of a land claim just because he was an OP. Looking back, it was probably an attempt by Ugu to halt Zion construction, because as mentioned before, not many people liked it. The fact that Nerd literally left the Discord in rage because of how you and other players were discussing the issue just shows the relationship between the other players and you: Hostile. As such, when we came to a mutual agreement, I was very happy with how it was handled, thinking that the drama was over. But then Alpha reported that you broke the contract, and people are yelling at each other again because of hostility. I still do not remember what the terms of the broken contract were, but all I knew was that it was enough to warrant a ban, just so OPs could have some quiet time to discuss the situation going forward. During the ban, we decided on additional punishments after the ban because of how ridiculous the whole drama got. We also put an end to the railway claim drama. We attempted to be fair, and decided to punish both you and Krebs further because you two did not seem to take negotiations and otherwise diffusion of drama seriously. I was even nice to you and gave you inside information on the OP discussions, which should be enough to warrant a ban for me now that I mention it. On a normal server, when a player is banned, they wait the full duration, regardless of how long it takes them to learn their lesson through contemplation. They do not harass OPs begging to be unbanned early unless there is a ban appeal process in place. (Which the UMS does not have) And the extra punishments after the ban were unfairly weighted towards you. This was my honest mistake, because I underestimated the size of the Zion MB System. You only were happy with your punishment after I added additional punishments for Ugultu and Alpha, while significantly reducing your punishment. Even after your reduced punishment, you were very angry when Krebs was allowed to stop halfway through his punishment. This was Nerd's call to cut the punishment early, as he also underestimated the size of the parking lot. Despite all this, the hostility continued. As you mentioned during your next (and final) appearance before the OP board, Ugu and Alpha seemed to play favouritism while building in Fegelein, and Ugu refused to build UNHQ, as well as the Teleport Hub, as part of his additional punishments, when you told him to, such that me and Nerd had to tell Ugu to do it. The last straw was during the Flying Saucer Incident. In it, you accused Alpha of corrupting Ugu to paste saucers above Zion, completely disregarding that they were up there for about 10 seconds before //undo was done, removing them. During deliberations, I attempted to be fair with judgement and punishments once again. In my judgement, I determined that this was a deliberate attempt to provoke you, regardless if it was a joke, because I assumed that you may have something involving overreacting. Even though Zion is your brainchild, attacking people for small acts like this was very frustrating, especially as I had to once again run the appeal process for the whole thing. When it came time to deal with punishments, Nerd, who initially said that he wanted out of this, suddenly told me of his intentions to ban you. Knowing that he was one of the people who remain hostile to you, I convinced him not to follow through. Instead, my judgement did show that Ugu and Alpha were more in the wrong than you, and so they, therefore, got the harsher punishment. At this point, you went to sleep. Once you were offline, Ugu and Alpha began to complain about how I was playing favouritism towards you, and accused you of continuing to appeal for the smallest amount of things until they and everyone else were banned from the server, after this successful appeal. They continued to harass you, and eventually, Parrot suggested that the general community have a vote on whether or not to ban you. This was something that I feared would happen, but because a large majority of people wanted the vote, I created a Strawpoll to see the general consensus on the matter. I already knew what the result would be, and symbolically voted to modify the rules, despite knowing that all my efforts would be futile in the end. I felt bad about the whole ordeal after I banned all your accounts, but deferred blame to Nerd because I figured you would begin to yell at me for banning you unjustly, despite the majority wanting it. Writing an article for the National Records about the ban, which you somehow acquired, made me think about the whole situation, and also made me realize that although the concept of Zion did make me want to come back on Minecraft, the way everything on the UMS was playing out was at the same time making me want to completely leave the server. This is why I wrote my opinion from my office in Solaris the way I did in the article. The reason I blocked you after you confronted me about this was that I wanted time to think about this entire situation, but also because I was in the process of moving across the country, and the last thing I needed, while I was packing, was harassment from you to cut the ban short, that you did nothing wrong, unfair corruption, and all of that. I completely lost all respect for you when I woke up on August 13 to find out the UMS had been shut down due to a raid and subsequent griefing. Further investigation revealed that one of the accounts had your exact IP, and the other account was from Japan. I would assume you got help over the internet to raid the server through OP status. Regardless, when you admitted and justified the raid to Alpha, that's when I had enough. I was done playing devil's advocate for you. And the final straw which compelled me to write this open letter was when you raided the wiki. We literally had just finished an Untercast episode recording with me and Nerd as special guests, and were talking about the UMS. I was about to disconnect from the voice channel when Nerd started panicking over voice. He found out that you raided the wiki. This made me so frustrated, I was very close to throwing my monitor out the window. As I write this, Alpha continues to send me PM conversations between you and him about how your raids were justified, how you were unfairly banned, how I was seemingly corrupted in order to ban you, all while Alpha is complaining that he has to be the messenger. Couple that with the fact that during your wiki raid, you called for essentially the entire OP board removed, affirmed to me that you are delusional and that nobody has been corrupted but you. Your pursue of the Flaw had corrupted you from the very start, and it causes you to think that everyone else has been corrupted, as they do not see the Flaw the way you do. You also are obsessed with extracting the Flaw from others, which further aggravates the situation. The reason I write this open letter is for you to reflect. Reflect on it as a normal person, but then reflect on it as Neo. Does Neo seem like a lunatic to a normal person? If he does, it may be time to think about if you want to be hated in the future. You have left lasting effects on the community, and may be responsible for the dissolution of the community and the shutdown of UMS. The total tally of your lasting legacy is as follows: *New players are now heavily scrutinized when they first announce intention to join the UMS. *New players are now heavily restricted, having to be followed around by an OP when they eventually are approved to join, to ensure they do not break the rules. **This creates issues for OPs, as they have to stop their builds whenever a new player logs in, just so they can be watched over. *New towns must have their lands approved by an OP and the general playerbase in order to avoid conflicts. This is significant because even when somebody's town is in the middle of nowhere, they have to wait for a considerable amount of time before they can build. **Transport systems are now very heavily restricted. One cannot even extend an existing transport line without OP consent. *Your raid has caused us OPs more inconvenience, as we now have to set up the whitelist for all new players who want to join. *The Wiki is also now heavily restricted, requiring an account to edit pages. This discourages most players from writing articles. *There is now an appeal process that will be used fairly often in the event of a disagreement, which inconveniences OPs and players alike. *You have become a meme in the UMS and the community, and many members, including myself, have expressed a desire to leave the community and/or the UMS entirely. I suspect that after all of this, you will continue to justify your raid, call the OPs corrupt and call for them to be demoted, harass everyone, and everything in your power to if not rejoin the UMS, shut both it and the community. If you decide on this, then godspeed, and I hope you will eventually learn your lesson proper. As a closing note, note that if even your biggest supporter turns an about face and leaves you, then you know. You fucked up. Majorly. -QT (QuestionTuesdayFTW) Category:Blog posts